


The Guns of Winter (Crack the Screen)

by historymiss



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Gen, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy Carter leads two lives. (Peggy is the Winter Soldier AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Guns of Winter (Crack the Screen)

London in January's a washed-out watercolour of a city, grey on grey on grey. Peggy finds comfort in these streets, leaning on the parapet of the South Bank, watching the Thames, steel-grey, reflect the sky.

_The sky here is white, a perverse reflection of what the snow underfoot should be. Shame she is ugly, the man says, turning her chin this way and that, thumb at the base of the scar that splits her nose in two, mangles her lip. We'll have to mask her._

[[MORE]]She doesn't visit here as often as she should. America is her home now, and defending that puppy of a country takes up most of her time, She pulls on her cigarette, hard, and flicks the butt out over the water, her lips pursing with that last smoky drag of nicotine.

_She trains to combat the unexpected weight on her left side, marks herself with a star, the only touch of red she's allowed. She retains only her uncanny aim (her eyes have never betrayed her) and a fierce, unflinching brutality in the face of any obstacle. She is not a woman. She is a soldier._

Later in the day there will be reports to write. The business with their 'friends' in Moscow (Cold War getting colder, the kind of cold that sticks to your skin and burns your throat), some kind of aping of Howard's technology. Peggy found it amusing, mainly because it irritated Howard so much.

_She moves through history, a ghost kept in a cage. The scar, the mask, the hair, make her unrecognisable. It amuses her superiors that the West believes she is a man. A legend. How backwards, they think, as they toast their achievements, as the Winter Soldier uses her uncanny strength to ambush a turned asset, ripping open his car on a lonely forest road, hauling him out, leaving him bloated, purple, choked, half-covered by leaves._

It is, she reflects, turning to her waiting escort (protecting her reputation rather than her body, or Howard's little joke at her expense- God she hates that man) the best thing Steve could have done for her, dying. Being Captain America's sweetheart was a role that rankled as much as it thrilled. She could never be an American housewife. But she's perfectly suited to the spymaster's trade.

_She is sold, she is sold like cattle and traded like meat, passed in her stasis from owner to owner until they wake her up one day and hand her a picture of a man with a square jaw, blue eyes, and blonde hair, and she doesn't recognise him at all._

Peggy Carter sits at the centre of a web that spans the globe. She is a widow, and she can can take the lives she's owed as easy as pulling a trigger. It's enough to make one rather big-headed. But not now: now, there's going to be tea, and a briefing, and another bloody meeting on what to do about the SHIELD-EXCALIBUR relationship. MI:13, Peggy privately thinks, can't find their arse with both hands and a map. She should have stayed at home.

_"Not you." Steve whispers, face underlit by blue glow, his eyes fervent and desperate. "Not you." -And the words filter into reality, and the Winter Soldier blinks as the world shifts around them._

_"Not you, not you, not you."_

They're installing a wall of valour at SHIELD HQ. Peggy makes a mental not to run over the list of men and women to be included. Steve, of course. And the Commandos. And- It'd be a shame, she thinks, abstractly, on her way to run the world, if Bucky wasn't remembered somehow.

On the rooftops, the Winter Soldier watches.


End file.
